Bolter Discipline

How do we see the impact of the new Bolter Discipline beta rule on DE? Essentially this doubles the firepower of marines and CSM.

I se eit making things more difficult for our poor flying cardboard boxes.
I mean, ouch.

I really don't see why GW think this is necessary, but it will hurt if we get too close.
I honestly see this going on the pile of reasons I won't use Wyches anymore. Not if they have to get throw even more shots...

On the plus side it'll mean more armies built with less mobility in mind, which plays into the strengths our army has of being able to pick it's fights.

I had something written for this, but frankly, tldr: If they're spending points on Marine bodies then that's actually better for us.

It's a neat little buff mostly to Terminators and Bikes. Otherwise, I agree with Hero's assessment. More targets to pop with disintegrators is good.

People aren't playing Space Marines because they suck compared to Knights, Guard, and Eldar. Rather than fix that problem they decide to just give Space Marines twice as many shots, because why do surgery when you can do a hatchet job.

TeenageAngst wrote:

People aren't playing Space Marines because they suck compared to Knights, Guard, and Eldar. Rather than fix that problem they decide to just give Space Marines twice as many shots, because why do surgery when you can do a hatchet job.

Pretty much right. 40K is a points game, and if they're spending points on MEQ instead of something we can't deal with, then that's just making the matchup easier for us.

They didn't gave space marines twice as many shots. They gave space marine more freedom on how to have twice as many shot.

Agreed with above. It's phrased a little clunky, but I think it's just a small bonus to range if the Marines stay stationary or are a special variety.

Even if it does double their shots, that thirteen point Tac Marine does .33 wounds to a Venom now instead of .17

I'm not sweating too much about it, personally,

I hate it, its the wrong fix for the wrong reasons....

Problems it is trying to fix: Terminators, Bikes, Tac marines are not played, Transports are not worth their points for Imperial (Other vehicles are fine like WW, Preds, and stalker)

Reasons why: To many points for both damage and survivability, along with massive more fire power and AP to break armor, Bikes can no fallback and shoot/charge or go up stairs. Vehicles are to easily tide up or killed off turn 2, something that should be a viable option but not as easy as it should be (blame cover rules along with re-rolls and double shooting/AP)

The Fix: Add more damage to bolters......

SM needs to have 2 wounds, +1 attack, adn -1ap on all melee/bolters for their current price.



The BIGGEST two problems of 8th are... Lack of stopping fire power and AP, and weak wounds are under costed. When 80pts of 20 wounds can deal same damage as Marines, but are triple the wounds, with AP -1/-2 being so godly abundant, a 5+ save on 5 marines vs 0 save on 20 guys gee wizz i wonder what players will pick.........


I propose to add 2 Rules to the BRB and it will make many more things viable
1) All vehicles, Walkers, MC's and Bikes have an additional fallback rule, if they fallback against any Infantry or Swarms they can still shoot.
2) Add most the city of Death rules (luck hit, cover/soft/hard, the obscure rules, etc..)

dumpeal wrote:

They didn't gave space marines twice as many shots. They gave space marine more freedom on how to have twice as many shot.

This. I see a lot of people online confused about what this rule does. It simply adds two extra conditions that each allow triggering the rapid fire rule. It's not changing how many shots a rapid fire bilter shoots.

Siticus the Ancient wrote:

dumpeal wrote:

They didn't gave space marines twice as many shots. They gave space marine more freedom on how to have twice as many shot.

This. I see a lot of people online confused about what this rule does. It simply adds two extra conditions that each allow triggering the rapid fire rule. It's not changing how many shots a rapid fire bilter shoots.

Still twice as many as normal tho, they can stay at max range in cover and get 2 shots at 24", or 4 with SB's

True that it is only a modifier to rapid fire and its not really more shots, but in general game play you will see more shots.


On a side note:
The BIG thing is bikers, UW Scout Bikers already were really good, this gives them a damage boost, something they didnt need. They need a utility boost to not force to play as UW.
So this new rule to make a few units more playable just made 1 unit that was being played even more playable... so good.

The biggest gain will be for land raiders ans others vehicles that will have their heavy bolter firing twice at max range

dumpeal wrote:

The biggest gain will be for land raiders ans others vehicles that will have their heavy bolter firing twice at max range

Heavy bolters are Heavy, not rapid fire. The new rules don't help them.

Pretty much, it gives models an extra shot at 12-24".
thats it.
Bikes/vehicles it gives them 1 extra shot

amishprn86 wrote:

I hate it, its the wrong fix for the wrong reasons....

Problems it is trying to fix: Terminators, Bikes, Tac marines are not played, Transports are not worth their points for Imperial (Other vehicles are fine like WW, Preds, and stalker)

Reasons why: To many points for both damage and survivability, along with massive more fire power and AP to break armor, Bikes can no fallback and shoot/charge or go up stairs. Vehicles are to easily tide up or killed off turn 2, something that should be a viable option but not as easy as it should be (blame cover rules along with re-rolls and double shooting/AP)

The Fix: Add more damage to bolters......

SM needs to have 2 wounds, +1 attack, adn -1ap on all melee/bolters for their current price.

The only thing I'd disagree with is AP-1 on all melee. Maybe on Chainswords, but not for standard marine attacks.

Regardless, the issue was that GW decided to make Primaris Marines, which were what normal Marines should have been to begin with.

amishprn86 wrote:

The BIGGEST two problems of 8th are... Lack of stopping fire power and AP, and weak wounds are under costed. When 80pts of 20 wounds can deal same damage as Marines, but are triple the wounds, with AP -1/-2 being so godly abundant, a 5+ save on 5 marines vs 0 save on 20 guys gee wizz i wonder what players will pick.........

I'd say that the issues with Marines go far beyond this.

You also need to look to the higher end of things. If you have Knights and the like running around in standard games at relatively cheap costs, then that's not going to help Marines.
- Firstly because - even with this rule - small arms fire is basically worthless against super-heavies. So most Marine units are going to be lugging around worthless weapons. Same problem we have with poison, except they pay even more for it.
- The second issue is the ridiculous firepower that Knights bring. When you've got city-levelling weapons being casually thrown around, then it basically makes no difference whether the target is a guardsman or a space marine. So now they're paying for armour that's next to useless as well.
- The third issue is that Knights (and other super-heavies) skew the meta badly in favour of anti-tank weapons, which means even more high-AP weapons for Marines to deal with.

Current 40k is the equivalent of taking the best soldiers in the world, giving them ordinary rifles, and then pitting them against a submarine armed with nuclear warheads and permission to 'go nuts'.

And the designers are currently in the process of scraping bits of irradiated soldiers off the ground and thinking to themselves 'Well maybe if we gave them slightly better rifles...'

I will say that this will make a melee horde style a bit harder to play, as they'll have to endure a full round of bolters before a charge, outside some shenanigans.

This gives a big bump to Stormbolters on marines though, with four shots at 24" they're probably one of the best anti-chaff weapons for their points at the moment

I see Land Raider Crusaders as being the big winners here.

I presume that all of this is in response to the numerous complaints from marine players about bolters not being good enough, particularly when, fluffwise, they should be particularly deadly in the hands of space marines. It's a little annoying, I guess, but I'm not too worried.

However, ideally, they would have every intention of buffing weaknesses in *every* army in this fashion, but that might be a bit much to hope for.

I might be missing something since most of my marine playing opponents tend to castle up anyway, but the only thing that worries me is Death Watch with Storm Bolters and Storm Ravens with Hurricane bolters since they won't be getting up close and personal any more into Blaster Range, but overall I don't think it's going to make them to big of an issue. Watch Masters in particular seem to be getting quite a lot of praise with this change, something about the Guardian Spear, 3dmg wounding on 2s rerolling shots or something which could be nasty but it's still only rapidfire 1.

Gizamaluke wrote:

I might be missing something since most of my marine playing opponents tend to castle up anyway, but the only thing that worries me is Death Watch with Storm Bolters and Storm Ravens with Hurricane bolters since they won't be getting up close and personal any more into Blaster Range, but overall I don't think it's going to make them to big of an issue. Watch Masters in particular seem to be getting quite a lot of praise with this change, something about the Guardian Spear, 3dmg wounding on 2s rerolling shots or something which could be nasty but it's still only rapidfire 1.

Scouts and DW units, DW is already the best "marines" with 2+ to wound ammo (or -1ap), i think its veterans? that all can have SB/SH for 20pts a guy that can DS and teleport. S you are shooting 4 shots almost always, 3++, wounding on 2+ always and then the other stratagems.

Their stratagems and SIA is what makes them good.

yesterday i played a game against a footdar list so i brought 10 deathwing termis
yes the firepower is godly especially with the deatwhing stratagem and belial, 80 bs3+ reroll all misses s4 at 24" shots are pretty neat
dark talons also profit from that with 24 shots hitting most things an 2+ within 24"
yet termis are still termis, once the scatbikes and dark reapers wiped my intercessors and flyers from the table my termis died to smite and executioner like guardsmen on a rainy day
i still dont see the reason why anyone would bring meq (esp every oldmarine, or even worse veterans), even with the better bolters

Hu I really misunderstood this rule, I thought a standard bolter was essentially getting 4 shots at half range, but that's clearly not the case giving it a solid reread. Really still no reason to use standard marines then, I really only see this making terminators/bikers better as they can move and get their full shots effectiveness at full range. I suppose it's not too bad for primaris marine either if you're gonna castle up with them, but not all that incredible.

As others have mentioned, definetly not the way to make standard marines better.